Asia-Pacific Social Science Review

About Asia-Pacific Social Science Review

Asia-Pacific Social Science Review — Journal Profile

Asia-Pacific Social Science Review (shortened to APSSR) is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary social science journal published by De La Salle University (DLSU) in Manila, Philippines, through the De La Salle University Publishing House. Its print ISSN is 0119-8386 — the identifier recorded in this JournalsWorld record, in the journal’s own published mastheads, and in the OpenAlex source record for the title. An online ISSN, 2350-8329, is recorded in reference listings for the journal’s web edition; the stored catalogue record carries the print number only, and authors citing the journal online should be aware that both numbers circulate. The journal appears twice a year and publishes original research on social science topics situated in, or with significant implications for, the Asia-Pacific region.

This profile sets out the journal’s identity and how to verify it, its aims and scope, the kinds of manuscripts it takes, its editorial arrangements and review process in unusual practical detail — because the journal publishes its policies openly — its citation record in the open databases, and guidance for authors. Figures are attributed to their sources, and anything that could not be verified from a fetched source is said to be unverified rather than guessed.

Quick Facts

Identity and How to Verify It

The journal’s identity is anchored in its print ISSN, 0119-8386, which appears on its own published issues and mastheads — an issue front matter PDF held in the Philippine eJournals collection shows the number together with the De La Salle University Publishing House imprint and the university’s Taft Avenue, Manila address — and in its host institution. OpenAlex resolves the ISSN to a single source (S50649283, resolved through the OpenAlex ISSN endpoint in this session) naming De La Salle University as host organisation. Any record that attaches this title to a different university, or this ISSN to a different title, should be treated as an error until the journal’s own repository pages say otherwise.

The journal lives today on the De La Salle University Publications platform within the university’s Animo Repository, where its aims and scope, its policies and its back issues are published openly. That repository home is itself a verification tool: the title, publisher and editorial information given there are the journal’s own statements, and they govern over any third-party directory entry — including this profile — where the two differ. The journal’s history in print reaches back well before its repository era: OpenAlex records works under this source from 1999 onward, and its issues from the mid-2000s survive in the Philippine eJournals archive, showing a journal already established, with an international editorial board, two decades ago.

Aims and Scope

The journal’s own aims and scope statement, published on its repository pages, welcomes “original and unpublished manuscripts discussing any topic in the social sciences situated in or with significant implications for the Asia-Pacific region”. Two tests follow from that sentence, and editors apply both. The first is disciplinary: the work must belong to the social sciences, broadly understood. The journal’s own description of its intake names the disciplines it draws on — among them political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, history, geography, demography, communication, social work, public administration and allied fields — and it welcomes work that uses the perspective of one discipline or combines two or more. The second test is regional: the topic must be situated in the Asia-Pacific, or must carry significant implications for it. A study with no regional anchor, however strong, does not fit; a study of a global process fits when its Asia-Pacific stakes are made explicit.

The statement adds a hospitality that authors in neighbouring fields should note: the journal “is also hospitable to Humanities research” and will consider submissions in literary, translation and cultural studies, particularly where they engage Asia-Pacific issues. That openness, together with the multidisciplinary brief, makes APSSR one of the region’s generalist social science venues — a place where a political scientist, an anthropologist and an economist working on the same Philippine, Indonesian or Pacific questions can appear in the same issue and be read by one another’s audiences.

The regional frame deserves emphasis because it is the journal’s reason for existing. De La Salle University publishes it from Manila as a venue in which scholarship about the Asia-Pacific — much of it written by scholars based in the region — is reviewed, published and indexed to international standards. In a global journal system whose centre of gravity sits in North America and Europe, a Scopus-indexed regional journal edited from within the region performs a distinct service: it sets an agenda in which Asia-Pacific questions are the main text rather than a case study appended to theories built elsewhere.

What the Journal Publishes

The journal’s published policies name three manuscript types, with lengths that authors should treat as firm expectations. Research Articles run to 5,000–8,000 words. Research Briefs — shorter, focused reports — run to 3,000–4,000 words. Book Reviews run to 800–1,200 words. Earlier published guidance from the journal gives the same architecture in slightly different numbers (full articles of 5,000 to 8,000 words with a 300-word abstract and five keywords; book reviews then capped at 2,000 words), and the current policies page governs: the 800–1,200-word review length is the figure stated there now.

Content follows the scope. A typical issue mixes full research articles across several disciplines — politics and governance, society and culture, economics and development, population and health, media and communication among them — with shorter briefs and reviews. Because the journal is multidisciplinary, editors and reviewers look for writing that a social scientist outside the author’s own subfield can follow: the published policies’ evaluation criteria, set out below, reward a clear rationale and coherent organisation as well as technical soundness, and manuscripts written only for a narrow circle of specialists may be asked to widen their framing before they proceed.

Editorial Arrangements and Peer Review

APSSR is edited from De La Salle University, with an editorial team and an international advisory board whose membership the journal publishes in its issues. Mastheads of recent series list Romeo B. Lee of De La Salle University as editor-in-chief, academic editors based at universities in Thailand, the Philippines and China, and Joseph C. Velasco of DLSU as managing editor; a reference entry for the journal names Ador Torneo in the editor role. Editorial teams change over time, and the masthead of the current issue on the repository is the governing source; this profile records the names above as they appear in the sources fetched, and authors should confirm the current team there before corresponding about a submission.

The review process is described in the journal’s policies with a completeness that authors will find useful. Manuscripts first undergo editorial screening — a desk evaluation — against published criteria: alignment of the topic with the journal’s scope; a compelling rationale, with a clear research problem, well-articulated questions or objectives and a convincing account of significance; soundness and clarity of methodology; quality of data and analytical rigour; coherence and organisation; and potential contribution to scholarship and to practice. At desk stage the editors may send a manuscript to external review, return it, or reject it. Manuscripts that proceed are reviewed double-blind by at least two experts, and the possible decisions are Accept, Revise and Resubmit, or Reject. The journal states that review typically takes approximately three to six months, depending on reviewer availability and the complexity of the submission, and commits to transparent communication with authors during the process.

Two further published rules matter. First, submissions must not be previously published or under review elsewhere. Work previously circulated as a working draft, working paper or conference proceeding can be considered only if the author shows that they retain copyright or hold the holder’s permission, has improved the text substantially — defined by the journal as changes comprising 50 percent or more — and acknowledges the earlier version in writing. Second, presentation rules are strict: manuscripts follow the APA style guide (APA 7 in the current policies), are submitted in MS Word format through the journal’s ScholarOne portal, and the main file must be anonymised, containing only the title, abstract, full text, tables and figures, and references, with no names, affiliations or other identifying material. Authors who ignore the anonymisation rule create avoidable delay at the desk stage.

Metrics and Citation Record

OpenAlex, resolved through its ISSN endpoint in this session, records the journal (source S50649283) with approximately 167 works and approximately 804 citations, an h-index of 12 and an i10-index of 17 in its summary statistics, with works recorded from 1999 and, in that source’s coverage at checking time, through 2020. Its leading OpenAlex topics are Philippine history and culture; Southeast Asian sociopolitical studies; global financial crisis and policies; international relations and foreign policy; and peacebuilding and international security. Readers should treat the OpenAlex work count as a coverage artefact rather than a census: the journal has published far more articles than 167 across its life, and the source’s 2020 end date shows that OpenAlex’s matching for this title lags its actual output, which continues on the repository. The h-index of 12 is nonetheless a fair indication of a steadily cited regional journal, and the thinner JournalsWorld record from which this profile was built carried the same figure, 16 in its stored SCImago-derived data — the two databases count different corpora, and both are reported here with their sources rather than merged.

The journal’s reference entry records indexing in Scopus, the ASEAN Citation Index and EBSCO. Scopus indexing is the significant line in that list for most authors: it places the journal in the citation system that universities across Asia use for evaluation, and it is the indexing that SCImago-derived directory data for this title reflects. The ASEAN Citation Index adds regional discoverability. DOAJ’s search API, queried in this session with the journal’s ISSN, returned no record; this profile therefore makes no open-access-directory claim for the journal, and authors should check the repository’s current access terms for individual articles, which are published openly on the platform.

How to Submit

Submissions are uploaded through the journal’s ScholarOne portal, reached from its repository pages. The checklist implied by the published policies is: write a research article of 5,000–8,000 words, a research brief of 3,000–4,000 words, or a book review of 800–1,200 words; situate the topic in the Asia-Pacific or argue its significant implications for the region; prepare the manuscript in APA 7 style in MS Word; anonymise the main file completely, keeping title, abstract, text, tables, figures and references only; confirm the work is unpublished and not under review elsewhere, and disclose and document any earlier working-paper or proceedings version, with the substantial-improvement condition in mind; and expect editorial screening followed, for manuscripts that proceed, by double-blind review from at least two experts over roughly three to six months. The journal’s policies page also provides a sample manuscript showing the expected format, and following it exactly is the simplest way to clear the desk stage.

Reading the Journal and Its Place in Philippine Scholarship

De La Salle University is one of the Philippines’ leading private universities, and its publishing house runs a stable of scholarly journals across the disciplines taught on its Manila campus. APSSR is the stable’s social science generalist: where sister titles serve single departments or professions, APSSR serves the College of Liberal Arts’ whole territory and the region beyond it. That position explains features of the journal that might otherwise puzzle an author — the breadth of its board, which in the mastheads fetched for this profile spans universities in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brunei, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, Singapore and China as well as the Philippines; the insistence that articles be intelligible and significant beyond their home discipline; and the presence of book reviews, which let the journal register new scholarship across many fields in a handful of pages.

For the Philippine research community the journal also plays a developmental role. Its published criteria and its sample manuscript teach the conventions of international journal publishing — anonymised review, structured argument, APA referencing, explicit statements of significance — to authors who may be submitting beyond their home institutions for the first time, while its regional scope gives Philippine and Southeast Asian subject matter a venue in which it is the centre of attention rather than a peripheral case. A scholar deciding where to send an Asia-Pacific manuscript should read a recent issue on the repository in full: the mix of countries, disciplines and methods in a single issue is the clearest statement of what the editors mean by the scope, and it is a better guide to fit than any summary, including this one.

Similar Journals

Authors working on Asia-Pacific social science commonly also consider the Asian Journal of Social Science and Asian Studies Review for regional generalist venues; Philippine Studies and the Philippine Political Science Journal for Philippines-centred work; Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia for Southeast Asia; Pacific Affairs for policy-relevant regional research; and DLSU’s own disciplinary stablemates for work that belongs inside a single field. APSSR’s distinguishing offer is the combination of a genuinely multidisciplinary brief, an Asia-Pacific test applied by editors based in the region, Scopus indexing, and a transparent, published review process run from a major Philippine university.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is its ISSN? Print ISSN 0119-8386; reference listings also record an online ISSN of 2350-8329. The stored catalogue record carries the print number.

Who publishes it, and how often? De La Salle University Publishing House in Manila publishes it twice a year.

What will it consider? Original, unpublished social science research — articles of 5,000–8,000 words, briefs of 3,000–4,000, reviews of 800–1,200 — on topics situated in or with significant implications for the Asia-Pacific, including some humanities work in literary, translation and cultural studies with a regional engagement.

How does review work, and how long does it take? Editorial screening against published criteria, then double-blind review by at least two experts; the journal states a typical review period of about three to six months.

Is it indexed? Its reference entry records Scopus, the ASEAN Citation Index and EBSCO. No DOAJ record was returned at checking time.

What style and system does it use? APA 7 style, MS Word files, anonymised main manuscript, submitted through ScholarOne.

Sources and Verification

This profile is based on sources fetched in this session: the live JournalsWorld record for post 27820 (title, print ISSN and stored metrics); the journal’s own aims and scope and policies pages on the De La Salle University Animo Repository (scope statement, manuscript types and lengths, evaluation criteria, review process and duration, prior-publication rules, APA 7, ScholarOne and anonymisation requirements); the OpenAlex source record S50649283 resolved through the ISSN endpoint (works, citations, h-index, i10-index, topics, host organisation and coverage years); the journal’s reference entry (biannual frequency, publisher, online ISSN, editor name and indexing in Scopus, the ASEAN Citation Index and EBSCO); issue masthead material in the Philippine eJournals collection (editorial board composition and article structure); and the DOAJ search API (no record returned for 0119-8386). One inconsistency in the fetched sources is flagged rather than hidden: the stored record’s h-index (16) and OpenAlex’s (12) differ because the databases count different corpora. A twin check against the JournalsWorld catalogue found no other record carrying ISSN 0119-8386.